10 Reasons why your Compliance Monitoring may be at risk
Is your organisation still relying on spreadsheets for managing compliance tasks? Here are some reasons why it may be time to reconsider.
Spreadsheets, once a staple for managing various business processes are increasingly outdated in today’s fast-paced regulatory environment. With the rise of specialised compliance management software, the limitations and risks of spreadsheets have become more apparent. Spreadsheets lack of automation and challenges in maintaining data security can make spreadsheets a liability. They not only introduce inefficiencies but also expose your organisation to potential compliance failures and security breaches.
Here’s why moving to a dedicated compliance management platform like ComplyPortal is not just beneficial—it’s crucial.
1. Inefficiency Slows Down Compliance
Compliance monitoring involves tracking multiple processes driven by business or regulatory obligations. Relying on spreadsheets for data entry has several issues with assigning and tracking ownership of individual tasks. With growing complexity of compliance requirements, spreadsheets can become unwieldy, time-consuming and also error-prone due to human inputs. This inefficiency can slow down your compliance processes, leading to missed deadlines and unnecessary administrative burdens.
ComplyPortal schedules tasks and automates notifications and prompts to responsible groups and individuals. Centralising your compliance data can further help provide senior management with visibility to critical information and transparency to potential areas of risk. This allows companies and compliance teams to proactively address potential issues before they become problems. With instant access to accurate and reliable information, you can streamline your processes and focus on higher-priority tasks.
2. Data Security Is Compromised
Spreadsheets were never intended to store sensitive compliance information securely. The risk of unauthorised access and data breaches increases when critical information is stored in easily shareable file formats.
ComplyPortal addresses these concerns by offering robust security features, such as strict access controls that ensure users can access to information based on permissions, enabling compliance teams to manage information on a “need-to-know” basis. Compliance officers and managers can have elevated access levels as needed. A comprehensive audit trail also tracks how information is accessed, providing added assurance. Transitioning to a secure, cloud-based platform reduces the risk of data breaches and protects your organisation from potential financial and reputational harm.
3. Compliance Becomes Harder to Maintain
With constantly changing regulations, keeping up with compliance requirements using spreadsheets can be overwhelming. The risk of missing critical updates or deadlines increases, potentially leading to non-compliance and associated penalties.
ComplyPortal simplifies compliance management tasks triggered by regulatory changes, such as rolling out a new policy or procedure and ensuring staff acknowledgement and attestation. The platform assists in managing periodic tests and monitoring of your compliance programme, providing valuable insights on the effectiveness of your processes which can further inform your training programmes and guide updates to your systems and controls. It ensures your compliance team stays up-to-date on monitoring tasks and keeps all compliance records easily accessible, helping you maintain compliance with confidence.
4. Lack of Automation Hampers Workflow
Spreadsheets offer minimal automation, forcing your compliance team to perform repetitive tasks manually. Additionally, manual systems can create information silos, making it difficult to ensure consistency across your organisation.
ComplyPortal automates routine compliance tasks such as scheduling monitoring, attestations and other periodic tests. It streamlines approval processes, sends notifications of upcoming and past-due tasks, and enhances collaboration and efficiency. The platform’s integrated workflow capabilities eliminate the need for back-and-forth communication, ensuring that everyone is aligned and working efficiently.
5. Data Errors Can Compromise Compliance
Manual data entry is prone to errors and spreadsheets are particularly vulnerable due to their lack of audit trail making it difficult to control who and when new updates are made. Additionally, a lack of access control on spreadsheets means tasks are not easily managed and it is difficult to assign tasks to groups or individuals for follow-up. Entries by specific individuals or groups and approval of data recording must be done manually. A single mistake can compromise the integrity of your compliance data, leading to inaccurate reports and potential compliance issues as well as increased time taken with seeking out specific information to be evaluated.
ComplyPortal minimises these risks by offering accurate data entry recording trails and the ability to set access-based permissions to manage who can enter and edit specific information sets, whilst maintaining a centralised, accurate source of truth. By reducing the potential for human error, the platform ensures that your compliance data remains reliable and accurate over longer periods.
6. Limited Reporting Hinders Decision-Making
While spreadsheets can manage basic data entry and storage tasks, they fall short in generating detailed business or compliance reports. Reporting on compliance tasks is often a manual and time-consuming process, with the added risk of missing or omitting crucial information from reports. Limited reporting capabilities can hinder your ability to gain the insights necessary for informed decision-making and may result in inaccurate or incomplete data when required.
ComplyPortal offers advanced reporting capabilities that allow you to generate comprehensive reports. These insights empower your compliance team to track performance, identify trends and address issues before they escalate. When information is required for decision-making or audits, ComplyPortal’s robust search and reporting features ensure you can quickly access the necessary data.
7. Scaling Up Is Difficult
As your business expands, so does the complexity of your business or compliance requirements. Spreadsheets quickly become unwieldy and inefficient, making it challenging to manage an increasing volume of data and monitoring demands.
ComplyPortal is designed to scale with your business, adapting to your growing needs without sacrificing efficiency or accuracy. Whether you are managing information for a small firm or a large enterprise, the platform supports smooth operations as your organisation evolves. ComplyPortal grows with your business without requiring an expansion of your compliance team to manage tasks, allowing you to allocate valuable resources in other high-priority areas.
8. Hidden Costs Drain Resources
The inefficiencies and manual labour associated with spreadsheet-based monitoring is not just time-consuming but also costly. Over time, these hidden expenses accumulate, draining your budget and resources. Coordinating spreadsheets with external tools like email for task management or approval processes is not sustainable and can require additional people resources to keep up with the added workload. Valuable time can be lost in getting new employees up to speed with a complicated internal process.
By streamlining processes and improving efficiency, ComplyPortal helps reduce administrative costs, freeing up resources for more strategic initiatives. The platform’s cost-effectiveness makes it a smarter, more economical choice compared to traditional methods.
9. Collaboration Is Challenging
When important data is stored in separate spreadsheets, cross departmental collaboration becomes challenging. Miscommunication, delays and version control issues are common, leading to reduced efficiency an increased risk of non-compliance.
ComplyPortal centralises compliance data and offers collaborative features that streamline communication and teamwork. Tasks can be easily assigned across groups or individuals with automated notifications and reminders so they can acknowledge and action important documents and company updates. This not only improves productivity but also ensures that everyone is working with the most up-to-date information.
10. Adapting to Change Is a Struggle
Regulatory and business needs are constantly evolving and your monitoring processes must be flexible enough to keep up. Spreadsheets, with their rigid structures, often lack the adaptability required to manage these changes effectively.
ComplyPortal is designed with flexibility in mind, allowing you to quickly update and adjust your monitoring processes as needed. This ensures that your organisation remains compliant and responsive to any changes in the regulatory and business environment.
Modernise Your Compliance Monitoring
If your organisation still relies on spreadsheets for business operations and compliance monitoring, it’s time to reconsider. The risks, ranging from inefficiencies and security vulnerabilities to compliance challenges and escalating costs are too significant to ignore.
By adopting ComplyPortal, you can take advantage of the latest in workflow automation, security, reporting and scalability, allowing your organisation to manage compliance and business information/protocols more effectively and efficiently.
How Can ComplyPortal Help You?
ComplyPortal is a user-friendly application equipped with integrated workflow capabilities that automate scheduling, notifications, approval processes, thereby enhancing the efficiency of your compliance monitoring tasks. Designed by compliance specialists, this compliance management system moves away from the complexities of spreadsheets, email approvals, and shared drives for managing critical documents. It streamlines your regulatory compliance management, making it more effective and efficient.
Key Features of ComplyPortal:
- Cloud-Based Platform: Access a full suite of compliance modules anywhere, anytime.
- Extensive Template Library: Choose from a wide range of compliance monitoring templates or use your own.
- Customisable: Adapt the platform to fit your firm’s unique needs.
- Responsive Support: Benefit from a tenured and highly responsive client support team.
- Efficiency Realisation: Implement ComplyPortal to realise efficiencies in your regulatory compliance processes.
ComplyPortal’s client service team will work closely with you to ensure successful implementation. Whether you select from our extensive library of compliance monitoring templates or prefer to provide your own, ComplyPortal is flexible and adaptable to your specific requirements.
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Find out more about how the ComplyPortal platform can help firms adapt to new regulatory expectations at: https://complyportal.uk/modules/
About ComplyPortal:
First developed in 2011 by compliance professionals for compliance officers, ComplyPortal offers workflow, automation, and several modules to help firms with control and regulatory compliance monitoring.
ComplyPortal simplifies financial services regulatory compliance management on an easy-to-use cloud-based comprehensive compliance platform. It enables compliance officers, risk officers and senior management to keep track of their firm’s regulatory responsibilities and workflows. Our platform includes the following modules, among others:
- Monitoring: a year-round schedule pre-populated with monitoring questionnaires to ease compliance processes.
- Approvals: authorise request and keep track of workflows
- Registers: lists controlled by the Compliance officer, but easy for staff to view.
- Risk: map and control risk areas to effectively identify and manage risk for your firm.
- Training: access our LMS platform for all Compliance and Governance Training
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